Belkin's New Thunderbolt Express Dock Revealed at CES Unveiled 2012

Belkin's upcoming Thunderbolt Express Dock will enable any Macbook and Ultrabook user with a Thunderbolt port to instantly access various desktop peripherals with just one cable. As Thunderbolt provides enough bandwidth to support multiple connections and devices, Belkin has built a dock that allows one to use multiple USB devices, watch Full HD 1080p videos, transfer data and stream online content at gigabit Ethernet speeds, all at the same time.

This much needed solution will surely help connectivity-starved mobile laptops to feel more like a workstation when used in a desktop setting. However, you'll have to wait at least another nine months if you want to get such a device for your laptop. And it won't be cheap either as Belkin has indicated a retail price of US$299 when it finally ships worldwide in September this year.

Within the Belkin Thunderbolt Express Dock, you'll find a Gigabit Ethernet port, 3.5mm audio port, two Thunderbolt ports (one upstream and one downstream) for daisy-chaining to other Thunderbolt compatible device, one Firewire 800 port, one HDMI port and three USB 2.0 ports. As it is now, the dock does seem like a pretty useful port replicator but we feel that USB 2.0 may be a little outdated especially when it would only be released later this year.